


The Moon When I'm Lost in Darkness

by Tassledown



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Backstory, Crusades, Eye Trauma, M/M, Non-Sexual Slavery, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25496809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassledown/pseuds/Tassledown
Summary: When Saladin took Jerusalem, the foot soldiers were sold as slaves. Yusuf Al Kaysani recognizes a face among the defenders he's seen too many times in his dreams. However, he doesn't normally come home with slaves.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Comments: 20
Kudos: 230





	The Moon When I'm Lost in Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a discussion of what language they must have had in common first, and also by the fact that Nicky seems far too stable and rational to have suffered through the First Crusade.
> 
> Note: This is not ignoring or denying that Nicky and Joe are lovers, but that they are not lovers at the time period described in this fic. This is simply pre-relationship for them.

Yusuf prayed to God his sister wasn’t home. He gestured for the Latin to follow him inside, and, with the same look of haughty disdain he’d worn the whole ride here, he complied. Yusuf removed his own cloak and was trying to convey to his companion he should do the same when his prayers proved to be in vain.

“Yusuf?” Hisba called.

“Yes, it’s me,” Yusuf called back. “Is there food prepared?”

“You’re always hungry,” she laughed. “It can be done while you bathe, I’ll let Thurayya know you’re back.”

“For two,” he added, and braced himself. He eyed the Latin man again -- his slave, he thought, and winced a little. The Latin was staring towards where Hisba’s voice was coming from, curiously, but he didn’t speak Arabic. Yusuf hadn’t found a language he did speak yet, and he was starting to worry he was German or from further North.

Hisba was immediately at the door, wearing her long tunic and no headscarf. She looked him over first, worried, then eyed their guest suspiciously. “Who is this? What is he wearing? He looks like he died.”

Yusuf already knew where this was going. “After we eat, habibti? Jerusalem is taken, I want to enjoy my chance to rest now that that’s over.”

Hisba looked the Latin over more curiously now and then turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “Rest and enjoy yourself, you mean? You usually like your companions in better clothes.”

“He refused to change and I hardly wanted to bring him into the city naked,” Yusuf said, exasperated. They'd washed the tunic when they had the chance, but the bloodstain had had too long to set.

“You usually manumit more than one slave after a battle. Couldn’t you have kept one that bathed?”

“Hisba, _please_.”

She switched to speaking Genoese -- it was the most common trade language they knew. “Did my brother explain anything to you yet, or has he sulked the whole way here?”

The Latin looked from Yusuf to his sister, then back. “Very little. Are you his wife?”

Yusuf made an angry noise in his throat, and switched to Genoese too. “You son of a bitch! I struggled for two days to talk to you! I tried Genoese the first day!”

The Latin turned and glared. “I didn’t want to.”

Hisba rolled her eyes at them both. “What’s your name? Yusuf, do you even know his name?”

“No,” Yusuf stared back at the man. Their introduction could’ve gone better. He could hardly say in front of Hisba that he’d put the Latin’s head back on his body for him at the Battle of Hattin a month ago. And after the siege-- The Latin wasn’t stupid. As Hisba said, he’d bought seven slaves and freed six, as penance for murder, and kept Nicky.

It was because he wanted to talk to him, but the man didn’t know that. Neither did Hisba; he’d never admitted to her he couldn’t die.

Hisba was waiting with an expectant look for the Latin to tell her his name. The man was staring back at her like a war dog, totally unmoved. He looked frankly ridiculous in their entry way, a stranger with messy hair and blood-stained clothes under a pale cloak to keep off the sun. He belonged in the middle of nowhere, not around their hardwood benches and books, standing barefoot on one of Hisba’s fine rugs.

Thurayya, their servant, came in from the kitchen. “Hisba? We have company?” she asked.

“Yes – Lunch, please, for the three of us, and can you send Radah with things for bathing upstairs?” Hisba answered in Arabic, then turned back to their ‘guest’. “Are you going to need help with that? I hear Latins never do it, so I suppose the tools might be unfamiliar to you. Either I can help or Yusuf can.”

The Latin looked between Hisba and Yusuf and back again, an inscrutable look on his face. Hisba was watching them both with a conspiratory smirk, that made her unappealing as a choice. Finally, with visible reluctance, he said, “Yusuf.”

Something in his tone made him hope Radah hadn’t set up the bathing things near the sandalwood trunk. Well. He knew the Latin didn’t have a knife on him -- he’d already checked that.

Yusuf pinched his nose, regardless. “Next time I bring home a slave, Hisba, I’ll remember this.”

Hisba smirked at him. “Make it a girl next time.”

Yusuf turned and led the Latin into the courtyard before she said anything worse. They went to a narrow stair and up to the walkway outside their living quarters, where Radah – fourteen, and Thurayya’s son – bowed and retreated quickly as he finished setting things out in the room.

“Do you fuck him too?” the Latin asked.

Yusuf gritted his teeth. “Radah and his mother are both freed, and have been since he was four. I don’t sleep with boys.”

The Latin looked around the room, taking in the sandalwood chest and other ornaments with a look of incomprehension. Yusuf leaned in the doorway and let him. He’d guessed he wasn’t used to people who were very well-off when he didn’t understand Latin; he’d been told, buying him, that he was a priest in the Knights Hospitaller, and could read Latin at least, but being able to read Latin hardly meant he could speak it.

Still, the man was finally relaxing. He took off his cloak and draped it on a chair, over the clean clothes, and studied the bathing things set out on the dresser: pitcher of water, basin, cloths, and other hygiene tools. He really did need to shave, Yusuf thought. He clearly knew how: his beard didn’t look like one grown on purpose.

The Latin dragged his tunic off his head and dumped that on the cloak too, then stepped over to the basin to wash his face.

Yusuf walked over to join him. “There’s soap here, and this is to clean your nails–”

The Latin seized the razor and grabbed Yusuf by the hair to put it to his throat. “I won’t be your whore, you hear me? Whatever you think you want from me–”

Yusuf staggered, then deliberately dropped to one knee. The Latin nearly lost his grip, and Yusuf lunged at his stomach, knocking him to the ground. They hit the floor with a loud thump, and then scrambled for the razor. He felt a hot sting across his eye and face, and grabbed the Latin’s hand with the knife. He slammed it into the side of the chest and held it there.

He was straddling him now, and staring down at him as blood dripped from his face onto the Latin’s. He tried to blink and shuddered; it didn’t work. Something on his right eye moved that shouldn’t. Despite that, he could feel it healing already: five seconds later, he could see out of both eyes again, one washed with blood. He blinked and felt tears streaming down his face, but he could see, as though the wound had never happened.

Shaking his head, he stopped and focused on the Latin again. The man was staring at his face, too stunned to speak.

“Yes,” Yusuf said. “This is why I wanted you. To talk. I intend to manumit you during Ramadan, in less than a month, whatever happens.” He reached over for the razor and pulled it out of his limp hand. Then he got up, quickly, to wash his face before Hisba came in.

He was patting his face dry by the time she entered, the Latin sitting on the floor, still in shock.

“What happened?” she asked.

“A misunderstanding, that’s all,” Yusuf said. “I’m sorry. One of his wounds reopened.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help?” She was staring at the Latin, then looked between them again, worry transitioning to mild suspicion on her face. “If one of you bleeds on my sandalwood trunk, you’re working to make up for the price. Either of you.”

“You could’ve told Radah to put him in the other room.”

“And insult our company? On your return? Yusuf!”

Yusuf gave up on reasoning with her. “Go, make sure they make something he’ll actually eat downstairs would you? I can handle him cleaning up fine!”

Hisba rolled her eyes at him, exasperated. “Try not to break anything this time. And make sure you clean up the blood!”

Yusuf shut the door behind her this time and groaned. He pressed his temple into it and looked back over his shoulder, but the Latin was simply getting up to wet a cloth and start washing. Yusuf stayed where he was, facing away, in hopes he would actually finish.

A few minutes later he heard, “Nicolo. My name is Nicolo di Genova.”

His heart leapt, hopefully. “Yusuf Al Kaysani. My sister is Hisba.”

“She’s not your wife?”

Yusuf heard more splashing water, and then rustling cloth and something dropped on the floor. He kept his eyes closed. If he – Nicolo – tried to stab him with one of the nail picks, it would hardly do much damage. Far less damage than prying when he believed Yusuf meant to ravish him would do.

“If I had a wife, Hisba would probably be the only one sleeping with her.”

There was a long silence, then, “What do you mean.”

His tone made it clear he’d already guessed. Yusuf wondered if he’d been dreaming of him as long as Yusuf had dreamed of Nicolo, and how much he’d seen. If he had… Well, he’d have reason to be concerned, he supposed. Yusuf sighed and explained as though he hadn’t guessed, anyways. “My sister has no interest in men, and I have little enough in women to give cause for divorce, regardless. I went to war instead.”

“If she has no interest in men, what was she teasing me for?”

Yusuf beat his forehead lightly into the door. “Because she was teasing me about coming home with you.”

“So your sister thinks you intend to use me for sex. Because you’ve had sex with slaves before,” Nicolo said, his tone accusatory. He certainly had been dreaming of Yusuf. “Why should I believe you?”

“If you’re talking about ibn Fadl, he’s free and probably wealthier than I am,” Yusuf snapped, wishing he hadn’t spent quite so much money on his company now. “I intend to free you, but since you apparently didn’t speak Genoese, I feared I was going to need to either write to you in Latin or teach you. I hardly had enough paper on me at the siege to ask if you know why your head reattached at the Battle of Hattin.”

Nicolo was silent for a solid minute, face dripping into the basin. “…So I did kill you, before. That was you, there, too?”

“Yes,” Yusuf exhaled, slowly. “You dreamed about me, too?”

“I thought God was tormenting me with you,” Nicolo said dully. “If I promise not to cut you, can I have the razor again? To shave.”

Yusuf shrugged, and turned around to return it. Nicolo watched him come with wary eyes, uncertain. He took a step back as Yusuf came too close, but he simply set the razor down on the dresser and stepped away again. He sat down on the chair, above the dirty clothes on the floor, and watched Nicolo shave.

He looked young, and younger as his face came out from behind the beard. Yusuf had thought Nicolo was his age their first meeting but he looked like he could have been in his mid twenties now. Then again perhaps Nicolo was like this because of what they were: Yusuf wasn’t sure he’d aged since he first died in Damascus, over ten years ago. Hisba was starting to comment on it, as she grew older and he did not.

When he’d seen Nicolo among the surviving soldiers of Jerusalem, being sold as slaves, the urge to buy him ( _someone else who might be like him_ ) was irresistable. He wished there’d been a better way, but what? They’d fought in Acre and Beirut before this too; he knew from the dreams that Nicolo had never left the Crusader states, and was rarely alone.

“I think I killed you what, three times?” Nicolo asked, as he paused to check on a cut he’d made shaving. It closed within moments. “Or saw you killed. You were in Aleppo, weren’t you?”

“You were there?” Yusuf startled. “Four years ago?”

“I escort pilgrims across the Holy Land,” Nicolo said, irritably. “We were unlucky, and in the city at the time.”

“Then you’ve been at battles I’ve died at five times, now.” Yusuf shrugged. “I died the first time in Damascus. I woke up under a collapsed wall. Dug myself out.” He tried not to think about it. The wall had crushed him to death twice after he woke before he got free.

Nicolo was silent long enough Yusuf wasn’t sure if he’d answer, or ask something else. He finished shaving and washed his face, again. The clothes fit him a little poorly – Yusuf was wider than him, in several places – but at least they didn’t display the arrow shot that had killed him last.

“A fight with a Roman Knight, in Tyre,” Nicolo said, abrupt again. “We argued about a girl… She’d been taken in by the Order as an orphan. He claimed she was his runaway slave. I accused him of lying, and he stabbed me. I woke up in a grave.”

Yusuf winced. “How long ago?”

“Fifteen years ago.” Nicolo shrugged. “I went to Jerusalem and joined the Order there. I thought my recovery meant I should be in the Holy City, to defend it with my life. That God had a purpose for me.”

Close to his age, then, Yusuf guessed. He didn’t know what to say to him. To have believed in God, in purpose, and to have lost in Jerusalem as badly as he had seemed unthinkable. Nicolo started tidying up the dresser at which he’d washed, his face remote as marble. 

Whatever his purpose, God hadn’t let him die any more than Yusuf had. “I hoped I could know you. Even if we don’t know what happened, or why, we…”

“The dreams,” Nicolo said. “I remember.”

It felt like he wasn’t saying something. Yusuf wasn’t sure it mattered. “Yes. I dream of two women, too. Did you…?”

Nicolo turned to him. “Two women?”

“Yes,” Yusuf’s breath caught in his throat. It wasn’t just him, then. Perhaps, it wasn’t just the two of them, either. “A woman from the far East, and an Iranian, I think. She calls herself the Scythian – Let me show you. I drew them.”

He stood and crossed the hall to his study, shaking with excitement. A minute later Nicolo came in cautiously behind him. Yusuf pressed the drawings on him when he wouldn’t stop staring. His books could be shown off later; this was far more important.

Nicolo looked from the drawings, to him, and back again. The look in his eyes shifted, from afraid and lost, to purposeful. He looked back up at Yusuf again.

“The same women I see. Do you know where they are?”

Yusuf swallowed, grinning. “I have a guess. Do you want to help me?”

**Author's Note:**

> After Saladin broke the siege of Jerusalem, the negotiations were to release all citizens who could pay ransom, which left roughly 15000 to be sold as slaves. Many were purchased or claimed and freed immediately, as Islamic theology does state that freeing a slave can be done as penance for things such as manslaughter or perjury. Yusuf buying and freeing slaves as a means of atoning for murder in what was largely considered a defensive war on the part of the Muslims would be a fairly reasonable extrapolation.
> 
> There is extensive scholarship about the way in which women relied primarily on their brothers for support in Islamic society, either in addition to or in place of marriage, and given the kind of lifestyle Yusuf lived as a soldier an unmarried sister in place of a wife would definitely have suited him just fine.
> 
> Given that extracanon materials state that Yusuf was a "merchant and an artist" aside from just being a soldier strongly implies that he was fairly upper-class (as the majority of Muslim soldiers otherwise were Mamluk slaves, which is not the typical kind of slavery either but would - usually - preclude him having any other vocation.) If he were from a merchant family, Genoese was the lingua franca for the majority of Mediterranean trade and he - and all his family members - absolutely would be functionally fluent in it, at minimum.  
> In contrast, if Nicky was born and raised in Genoa and became a priest, that doesn't inherently require that he have anywhere near the education or means as Yusuf (and the less he had, the more likely he'd be taken in by the idealism) in order to wind up in the Holy Land out of a sense of religious obligation.
> 
> In Muslim Jurisprudence, one Sunni school and the Shi'ite position allow a woman to initiate a divorce over her husband refusing her conjugal relations. The others do not. The Fatimids under Saladin were Shi'ite Muslims, and therefore that was a potentially valid result.


End file.
